What Hunts Inside the Shadows (Of Flesh & Bone, #2)

by Harper L. Woods

I wondered if it was because I’d stabbed him multiple times, or if it was just an issue he took with my personality. It hardly mattered either way.

“Stay close to your mate. I fear something else may be coming for your life, Estrella.”

“It is yours. Whether it beats or not,”

“Why would I want to fight with you? All I want is to love you,”

“If you are able to imagine your life, your future, without me in this world, then why would I want to live?”

“I love you, Estrella. I have loved you for centuries and waited for you to be mine. If there is no hope, no chance of you accepting me into your heart in truth, then I will gladly allow you to be the one to end my eternity of suffering. If the last thing I see is your face, then I can go to the Void in peace.”

You can have your freedom or you can have me, but you cannot have both,”

“I love you. In this life or the afterlife, my star. I will always wait for you.”

I couldn’t kill the very being who had brought me my first moments of real happiness. I couldn’t end the only male I’d ever loved, even if he was a monster.

This was just us, without a single care or thought for anyone else. This was a private moment between lovers in the night, a fusing of souls that I didn’t think either of us understood just yet.

“Mine,” he murmured,

This was not just sex. This was the physical manifestation of our love, and tears stung my eyes as I denied the urge to twist it into something filled with hatred. I’d let it go. I’d consumed it for myself. How could I hate the male who would have let me kill him to take my freedom? “I love you, min asteren,” he murmured,

“I think you will find that, regardless of where you end up in Alfheimr, regardless of the Court you choose to call home, and whether or not you accept your bond with me as your mate, there is not a place in the five Courts where you will be anything less than royalty,”

I was not made for war. I was made for peace and a cuddly blanket in a comfortable chair in a library with a book in my hand. And I was so tired of the fucking cold.

Same Estrella

“Do try to remember that only one death separates you from taking orders from me.”

I would do it with him all over me. With his presence to support me through the confrontation. Was I…really hoping to have the smell of sex with him on me?

There’s no reason for you to be embarrassed about anything when you’re with me.”

“Then we’ll just have to make sure you smell like me come morning,” he said. The moment his hand touched my bare skin and his lips coasted over my neck, I realized one very clear thing. It didn’t fucking matter.

“Your emotions have a very distinctive feeling when you’re thinking of me. I’ve come to recognize what it means when that travels down the bond,” he answered.

“Bitter,” he said with a shrug, his lips twisting to the side as he crossed his arms. “Sweet, guilty, so full of love and hatred in equal measure. It feels as if you know you love me, and you fucking hate every moment of it.”

“I don’t want to be there without you,”

“I don’t want to exist without you,” he said,

“I would do anything for you, min asteren.

“I’ll complete the bond.”

Why was it that women were always so quick to judge other women? Why was it the woman we vilified, even when presented with the truth that the woman had been a victim of the same deception?

Women needed to be better, to do better, because at the end of the day, every one of our actions could see us condemned—while men were free to fuck and murder, to steal and lie, and it was all just brushed off as another day under the sun.

“Your lifespan is the blink of an eye. I will rest my head tonight, and by the time I think of you again, you’ll already be dead.”

“You are a child of the dark.

“There were two children, two girls brought to us for protection the night the Veil was formed. Fallon is one of them and could very well be the daughter you seek,”

We knew that one of them was the child of Mab and that someone would come for her one day, but only the elders know the truth of the other and what her purpose will be in all of this,”

Not so long ago, I would have fought him for the way he seemed determined to take care of me. It was ridiculous to think of doing that now, knowing that his care came from a place of love. That it wasn’t a statement of his belief that I was incapable of doing things for myself. It was just him. Loving me. “I love you, min asteren,”

“And I love you, Caelum,” I said, and that part of me who had hated to admit such things because

All the secrets he’d kept. All the things he’d known and hid from me—all his vague nonsensical statements. The things he swore he would tell me, but had never had the chance. Brann.

“He loved you. In all your lives, he stood beside both of you and was your greatest protector until the day he took you away.”

“The two of you lived side by side for ten lives, existing in these tunnels, and you were the best of friends,” Imelda said, studying the way we stared at one another.

She would be submissive to no man in the end, and would settle for nothing less than an equal at her side.

“Your lives have always been short. Even for a human lifespan. It would make sense if it was because your soul was never meant to be trapped within a human body.”

“There doesn’t need to be romance involved for you to sit on his face, Imelda. God’s sake,”

“Which Huntsman are you not fucking?” I asked, my gaze bouncing back and forth between the two women. “All of them,” Imelda said. “She is going to fuck Holt. It’s only a matter of time,”

I was so tired of being hurt.

“Now Holt has seen you, min asteren. He’s seen you naked and not stuffed full of my cock. Worse yet, I lost you. For one fleeting moment, I felt the pain of this world without you in it,”

But I was his mate. I was the one whose face would be recorded in the books where I stood by his side; the one who would bear his name if we ever managed to complete the bond. His wife.

Never dull how bright you burn so that others may feel comfortable in your presence.”

All I know is that Veil was supposed to come down when the first of you entered your thirteenth life.

“You will protect one another. In some moments, it may benefit you; in others it may cost you. But you will stand together, to face what is coming, as you were always meant to be.”

“But I would sacrifice everyone I have ever met to save you.

“She had friends who were intrigued by me. They treat all her children like their personal playthings. It's just her way.”

Unless it was because he’d been unwilling. Rape was not sex.

Holt took a step toward the scene from where he watched at the edge, but seemed to catch himself with a confused, disgruntled look on his face that brought me far too much amusement under the current circumstances.

He settled himself against her ass, pressing closer than was probably necessary as she froze solid. “I did warn you that you would feel it,” he added with a chuckle, reaching around her to grasp the reins in one hand.